Slipping Back in Time
by Vicki and Teazer
Summary: My first Fillmore fic with a crummy title. Ingrid Third has to go back in time to go after some psycho who stole time watches from the local Radio Shack. CHAPTER THREE UP!
1. Act One

Hehehehe, yeah, all right. I don't own this. You can't sue me. Nanee nanee naneeee!!!

~Act One

*****

            Fillmore and Ingrid were relaxing one day in Ingrid's room after school. Fillmore sat at the large wooden desk in the back of the room and upgrading the Safety Team's official website. Ingrid lay flat on her back on the bed playing with a paddle ball with an unusually long string attached to the ball and was hitting it against the ceiling. 

            Suddenly a loud beeping sound echoed throughout the room. Instinctively Fillmore grabbed his walkie-talkie and turned it on. The sound of Jr. Commissioner Vallejo's voice boomed from the walkie-talkie. 

            "Fillmore, you need to see this," he informed him urgently.

            "Snap, why do you people always have to do that?" Fillmore complained. "Why can't you just tell me what happened for once?"

            "Oh, fine. But I'll have to make this quick. A supply of imported time watches have been stolen from the local Radio Shack."

            "I didn't know they sold time watches."

            "Well they do all right! And several crates of 'em have been stolen by this wacko in a lobster suit."

            "Another one? Dawg, what do these people have against our school mascot?"

            "LET ME FINISH! They say that whoever it was grabbed a couple of crates and lugged it outside in a shopping cart. The sales clerk pursued them down the alley between 23rd and 24th and the last thing he saw was whoever it was disappearing wearing one of the watches. He took the rest of the watches with him. We need you and Ingrid to find out who it was, and pronto."

            "But how are we supposed to catch up to whoever it was if they went back in time?"

            "_You use one of the watches and go after them! _The police recovered a watch that the thief dropped before he left."

            "All right," Fillmore muttered. "We're on it." He turned to Ingrid. "Ingrid, we need to—"

            "I heard."

            Suddenly the telephone on the desk rang loudly. Fillmore picked up the receiver. "Hello, this is agent Fillmore…oh, hi Dad…really? That sucks…yeah, I'll be right over…see ya." He turned a dismayed look toward his counterpart. "That was my dad. My mom just went into a coma, and I'm afraid you'll have to do this mission by yourself."

            _Thud. _Ingrid toppled heavily from the bed to the floor in a split second.  "**_WHAT?!?!?!! YOU WANT ME TO COVER FOR YOU JUST BECAUSE YOUR MOTHER WENT INTO A FREAKIN' COMA????!!!! WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO CHASING THAT FREAK BY MYSELF???!!!_**"

            "Well," Fillmore began thoughtfully, "I guess that I can call up O' Farrell and—"

            Ingrid quickly stood up and held up a hand. "Ok, ok, I'll go by myself…what I don't see is why your mother had to pick this specific time to go into a coma!"

            Fillmore rolled his eyes and left to go home. Ingrid sighed and slung her bag over her shoulder. It was going to be a long night.

*****

End of Act One.

Yes, that was probably the shortest chapter you've ever read, but the second act is going to be much longer! I just thought that this would make a good introduction to the story, that's all. Pleez don't kill me or something now.

**~Teazer**


	2. Act Two

Hehehehehehe, evil second chapter… 

~Act Two

*****

            Ingrid arrived at the alley between 23rd and 24th shortly after Fillmore left to visit his mom in the hospital and find out when she was going to wake up from her coma. When she arrived she was greeted by the presence of half a dozen police cars parked along the sidewalks and strips of yellow caution tape draped around for one reason or another. _They're making a big deal out of a bunch of stolen time watches,_ Ingrid decided as she took all of this into her photographic memory. 

            A policeman came running up to her. "Hey, little girl! Are you one of the kids from the Safety Patrol?"

            "Yeah, I'm—" Ingrid began, reaching for her badge, but the policeman wouldn't give her the chance. He slapped a time watch into her palm; it looked like one of those weird calculator watches but instead of numbers it had this tiny timeline and a back button and a forward button. On the timeline a little red line marked the place which read 2004. _This looks simple enough to operate. _Ingrid fastened it to her wrist and glanced up at the policeman. "What year should I set it to?" she questioned him.

            He shrugged. "I dunno," he admitted. "I'm just a policeman."

            "I am aware of that," she said angrily, "but if I'm supposed to catch the guy who did this I need to know what time to set it to."

            "Look, kiddie, there's a fifty-fifty chance of you getting it right," the policeman retorted. "It's either the back button or the forward button. Now, I need to join the other guys for a thorough examination of the alley, so you better get going now." And with that he turned and jogged back into the alley.

            "Crackers," Ingrid growled. "He was a lot of help, wasn't he?" Again she studied the time watch. Which button should she push? What if she pushed the wrong one? Finally, Ingrid decided on the back button. It seemed more obvious that the culprit would go back in time instead of forward for…some reason. She held her breath, wished herself luck, and pressed the back button with her thumb.

            _Whoosh. _She felt herself spinning as she seemed to be sucked down into the ground below, tunneling further and further back in time…

            And just as suddenly as the sensation had begun, it stopped. Ingrid collapsed down onto a tiled floor inside what seemed to be a laboratory of some sort. She checked her watch; the year was 1991. She then dizzily stood up and, seeing a bunch of people crowded around something in the back of the room, ducked behind a file cabinet and crouched there to watch. 

            There were three people, two men and a woman. One of the men, wearing a bright white lab coat, recorded something onto a sheet of paper on a clipboard and turned to the two other adults. "Well, the experiment's complete," he informed them. "He's all ready for you now."

            "What does he do?" the woman questioned. 

            "He was programmed to act as we believe children would act in the year 2004," the man in the lab coat replied. "He will live by all of the special terms we have created and wear torn clothes and smell bad, yet still have extreme talent in chess tournaments. We think we did a good job," the man added. 

            The second man stepped back about a foot, revealing a large robotic baby in a playpen. "Do you mind if we see it in action before we take it home?" he asked.

            The first man smiled. "Of course you may." Reaching down into the pen, the man flipped a switch on the back of the baby's head. 

            "Yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo yo," the baby babbled. 

            "What's its name?"

            "This is experiment #709886. You may call him Checkmatey."

            Ingrid decided that she had seen enough. She was about to press the back button again when something caught her eye. Turning to see the drawer handle on the file cabinet, she noticed a lock of red hair caught in it. Hastily she removed a plastic bag from her backpack and stuffed the lock of hair inside. After checking around her for more evidence, the teen pressed the back button on her time watch.

            The same spinning sensation overcame her as she was being transported back several more years into the past. She fell down onto another cool tiled floor. Afraid that she was back in the laboratory, Ingrid surveyed the room she was in before she would get up. But then she saw a bright red lobster mural painted on one of the walls. She was in the hallways of X Middle School…but what year was it? Ingrid checked the timeline on her watch: 1954. 

            The school bell rang suddenly, causing Ingrid to jump. The hallways were instantly flooded with students from sixth to eighth grade, all of whom running about in a hurry to get to their next class. Ingrid felt extremely out of place; with all the other girls around her wearing long skirts and ruffled blouses and herself in her modern black dress, she could tell that she stood out tremendously. She inched along the wall, trying not to be noticed by the other students and keeping an eye out for evidence that the thief might've left behind. 

            But then finally did Ingrid notice something out of the ordinary. She spotted a scrap of what looked like paper lying on the floor. Not just any paper though. Ingrid looked on the back of the scrap and immediately knew that she had found the next clue: it was the Kodak logo. This must've been ripped off the corner of a snapshot from someone's camera, and she was sure that none of these students would be carrying a portable camera along with them to school. She smiled to herself. One step closer to the thief.

            "Mr. Truman, Mr. Truman, there she is!"

            Startled, Ingrid stood upright and turned to see a young teen wearing a yellow skirt down to her ankle running up to her, leading a teacher toward her. 

            "Mr. Truman!" the girl was shouting. "Mr. Truman, that girl's skirt barely covers her knees! It's against the dress code! Get her in detention, Mr. Truman!"

            Ingrid sputtered indignantly as the teacher marched toward her. Then, right before he reached her, she ran out to the other side of the hallway and into the girl's bathroom and locked herself in one of the stalls. She could hear Mr. Truman and the girl coming after her, but just before she heard the bathroom door start to open she punched the back button with her forefinger and waited for the sensation to begin.

            For what she hoped was going to be the last time Ingrid collapsed to the ground. This time it was a fairly dirty, dusty ground outdoors, unlike the other places Ingrid had landed in. She checked the year on her watch: the red mark was on the year 1906.

            Ingrid shakily stood up and looked around her, then immediately held her nose in disgust. Somehow she had ended up in some sort of junkyard. Huge mounds of trash rose up from the ground like mountains. "This is so _disgusting,_" she moaned as the putrid smell of rotting garbage filled the air. "What would the thief be doing in a place like this…? Hey!"

            Something small and warm and furry collided with her shoulder. Reeling backward and trying desperately to fight the thing off, Ingrid took off her backpack and swung it over her shoulder in an attempt to hit whatever was attacking her. She heard a loud yowl of rage as her backpack hit the animal and it fell tumbling to the ground. 

            Ingrid spun around and looked down to see a large male tabby cat glaring back up at her. She backed up in horror as the cat's hair stood on end, while it curled back its lip and let out a low, loud _hiss_. 

            Defensively she held out the backpack in front of her. "C'mon, just try it," she growled at the cat. "I dare ya, just go ahead and try it…"

            What she didn't expect was for the cat to actually do as she dared it to do. It lunged at her head, causing her to shield herself with her backpack, which the tabby crashed into and fell back to the ground.

            But before she knew it she could see all of the other mangled stray cats that inhabited the junkyard creeping out from the shadows, preparing to take her down. She backed up against a mound of greasy trash, pressing herself against it and waiting for them all to strike…

            But then a bright flash, much similar to a camera flash, lit up the area. The cats screeched in pain and fright and fled the area. Ingrid spun around to face where the camera flash had come from and couldn't believe what she saw. 

            Standing on top of the mound of trash next to hers was a short figure with flaming red hair. Next to him was a crate overflowing with time watches, and on each wrist he was wearing at least six of them. Ingrid put a palm to her mouth in horror as she took in what stood before her.

            "O'Farrell!!"

*****

End of Act Two

OooooOooooOoooh, ain't this dramatic? Yep, it was O'Farrell that she saw, and just to let you know I'm not going to go in the next chapter and say, "No, just kidding! It wasn't O'Farrell, it was some other real evil guy! Fooled ya, ha ha ha ha ha!" I just wanted to try something new this time.

~Teazer


	3. Act Three

Yes, I'm back and I'm about to finish writing a fic within a span of three days! Whooo! It's my new record! Anyway, I had my friend read this when I was about halfway done and she liked it, so since I got my hopes up YA BETTER SEND IN GOOD REVIEWS!!! Hehehehehehe, read on.

~Act Three (THE FINAL CHAPTER!!!!!!!!!!!!)

***** (watch me abuse my fuzzies in an effort to make the story look longer!)

            "But O'Farrell…why did you do it?" Ingrid demanded. Who would ever consider the twitchy red-haired twerp to be an evil mastermind? But in a way it all made sense; the lock of red hair she found, the piece of one of his pictures…it all fit together. "What did you want with the watches?"

            "What did I want with them?" O'Farrell cackled. "WHAT DID I WANT WITH THEM?!?! I wanted REVENGE, that's what I wanted with them! I'm sick and tired of being the weakest link at the Safety Patrol!!!"

            "So you go and steal a truckload of time watches?"

            "Well…yeah!" O'Farrell answered. "The perfect way to get revenge from the Safety Patrol is to do exactly what they are against—commit a crime." Suddenly he looked saddened. "Everyone was always pushing me around, Fillmore would dump all his pet fish on me, and everyone called me a twitchy red-haired twerp." The mad glint in his eye returned. "But I'm through with all that now! Since I'm quitting the Safety Patrol, I'm going to be freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee………."

            "Okay, major correction time here," Ingrid interrupted. "a) Nobody pushed you around, b) You _took_ all of Fillmore's fish, c) No one called you a twitchy red-haired twerp, and d) You're going to be fired anyway after Vallejo finds out what you've done!"

            "I've kind of figured that out," O'Farrell snapped. "But now that you know what I'm up to, and if you take me back to 2004 I'll be arrested for shoplifting and for ruining the Lobstee costume I've buried around here somewhere, I'll have to DESTROY YOU! MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!" Laughing manically, the thief pressed buttons on two of the watches that Ingrid had never noticed before and two purple lasers cut through the air and knocked her down. She tumbled backward and crashed into the base of a mound of trash.

            O'Farrell continued to laugh insanely, thinking that the battle was over. He was about to clamber down from his trash pile to remove her watch, but before he could reach her she leapt to her feet holding a large hubcap, then threw it like a Frisbee at him. It soared low to the ground, hitting his ankles and sending him sprawling.

            "You were never the sharpest crayon in the box, O'Farrell."

            The red-haired kid sputtered in confusement. "But…how? Those lasers were supposed to kill you!"

            "Then Radio Shack ripped you off," Ingrid replied. "It only tickled a little bit. I could hardly feel a thing."

            "WHAAAAT??!!!" O'Farrell jumped to his feet and jabbed at the button on his watch repeatedly. Several lasers came out, but before they could hit Ingrid they stopped short and disintegrated in the air.

            "CHEAP-O PIECE OF JUNK!!!!!!!!" O'Farrell screamed as he ripped the watch off his wrist and pummeled it into the ground with his shoe.

            "So, now that you know that you can't kill me, I'm going to have to take you back to 2004," Ingrid informed him. She stepped toward him, reaching out for his arm. He looked at first like he was going to give in, but all of a sudden he grabbed the hubcap from the ground and swung it at her head. Ingrid dropped to the ground, dodging the blow, but before she could stop him he was off and running.

            Ingrid swiftly rose to her feet and chased him through the junkyard. She could hear the mournful wails of all the cats, the smell of the garbage penetrating her nostrils with its unbearable odor. Every once and a while she would catch sight of O'Farrell's shoe or camera swinging around as he turned a corner. Breathing heavily, Ingrid put on an extra burst of speed, and she just knew that she was going to catch him now…

            Then, right after the barbed wire fence around the junkyard came into full view, so did O'Farrell. "Aha!" she shouted.

            (I will now conduct one of those stoopid little run-on sentences made to look longer by inserting little DOTDOTDOTs in random places! Go me!)

            O'Farrell glanced behind him, then put on an extra speed himself…Ingrid launched herself at his ankles and caught him in full tackle…O'Farrell forgot to look where he was going…O'Farrell crashed into the fence because of this…and the last thing he heard was a loud _crunch _as he landed on top of the remaining eleven watches he was wearing.

            Ingrid slowly got up and dusted herself off. Looking down at her feet she saw O'Farrell, lying face-down on the ground with a nasty purple bruise on his forehead where he hit the fence. Pieces of the broken time watches littered the ground around her. She picked up several pieces and examined them, but then she realized…

            She was wearing the only time watch left.

            Ingrid (after several hours of desperately trying to find her way back to where she was before and having no luck asking any of the cats' directions cuz they all had made a mad attempt to scratch her eyes out) regained the crates of time watches that the wacky red-haired psycho teen had stolen and pressed the forward button on her watch.

            The world around her began spinning again, but instead of falling downwards she seemed to fly up into the sky… flying all the way back to the year 2004. 

            When the world stopped spinning, Ingrid took a glance at her new surroundings. She was back in the alley, still carrying one crate under her arm and the rest of them stacked neatly around her. She now wondered if it was a good idea to leave O'Farrell stuck in the year 1906. But, for the time being, it was the least of her worries.

            Two policemen came running up to her. One of them was the policeman she had talked to before. "Great!" he said happily as the two of them approached Ingrid. "You got the time watches back!" He then looked around her, as if expecting that she had brought something else with her. "But where's the thief?"

            "Well, ahhh…" Ingrid began uncertainly, "you're probably not gonna believe this, but… I kinda left him back in the year 1906."

            "You _what?!?!_"

            "I know, I know, it was probably the most idiotic and random thing for me to do, but I thought that if I did leave him there he would learn his lesson and never steal again—"

            "He could've ruined the space time continuum by now!" the policeman shouted frantically. "He could change something that happened in 1906 and history could've been changed!" He turned to the other policeman. "You, take one of these watches and set it to 1906. I'm going to get the others and see if I can find anything unusual that the thief might've changed."

            "Excuse me, sir," Ingrid interrupted, "but if he really did ruin the space time continuum, then wouldn't all of you had forgotten everything that happened before I left and we wouldn't be having this conversation now?"

            "Will you _shut up?!_" the policeman screamed. "We all have work to do!" He grabbed one of the watches from one of the crates and ran off.

            Ingrid watched in dismay as the policeman and his partner ran off with the watch. "People just keep on getting stupider and stupider," she decided, and she left for home.

            Later that evening Fillmore called her on the telephone. "Hey," he said. "The doctor says that my mom is probably going to wake up next week if we're lucky."

            "Congratulations."

            "Yeah. So, did you find the thief?"

            "Uh-huh."

            "Who was it?"

            "Actually, it was O'Farrell."

            "What?! What would a twitchy red-haired twerp like him want with a bunch of time watches?"

            "Fillmore, believe me, it's a _long _story…"

*****

THE END

**I do not own Fillmore or any of the characters. I only own this fanfiction and the original plot belongs to me. **


End file.
